Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.
NCSE's executive director Ann Reid was interviewed for the Climate One podcast (December 10, 2021), along with Katie Worth, author of Miseducation: How Climate Change is Taught in America, Lea Dotson of Action for the Climate Emergency, and Ben Graves, a former high school science teacher, about the state of climate change education in the United States.
Describing the results of NCSE's survey research among science educators, reported in "Mixed Messages" (PDF), Reid commented that it was common to see "a bit of bothsidesism in the classroom": teachers emphasizing both the scientific consensus on climate change and the idea that there is credible scientific disagreement about climate change.
Responding to a question about whether accurate information about climate change is actually taught, Reid observed that survey research suggests that a lot of science teachers are teaching the topic but not always accurately. She added that owing to the decentralization of American education, "it's very, very possible for a lot of students to just miss out altogether."
When the topic of equipping students to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate information arose, Reid took the opportunity to discuss NCSE's ongoing work in developing model lesson plans on the nature of science, which, she joked, include "some tools that have names that only an eighth grader could love" such as CRAAP (PDF).
Reid also discussed NCSE's work aimed at protecting and improving the treatment of climate change in state science standards, observing, "we spen[d] a lot of time keeping our eye on state science standard renewals as states go through updating their science standards we keep a really close eye to make sure. .., that they're not watering down these areas of science."
Finally, asked what gives her hope, Reid replied, "Well, what gives me hope is science teachers," adding, "They are really an amazing and committed group and they are willing to put themselves on the front line and teach these topics, even in places where they are reasonably expected that there's gonna be [pushback] on it. They need our support."
